Campaign Supernova
The revamped Master of Orion shines bright, but doesn’t show us much we haven’t seen before.
The subtitle for Wargaming’s new Master of Orion reboot is “Conquer the Stars”, but “Hire the Stars” would have worked just as well. Michael Dorn, the Worf of old, intones the interplanetary histories of alien races. Mark Hamill snags another entry for his gaming resume, Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) voices a grey alien emperor, and John de Lancie (Star Trek’s “Q”) and Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) feature as human emperors. The diplomacy screens animate these leaders beautifully, and the planets are almost as impressive as Elite: Dangerous’s, but this is a release that’s stubbornly dedicated to recreating the 4X experiences of yesteryear.
In singleplayer and multiplayer, these experiences usually involve founding colonies, and managing those colonies’ industrial and research output, all while sending scout ships out to nearby stars to find what may be hiding there. Sometimes you’ll find untouched planets to colonize, on other occasions you’ll find aliens to befriend or crush.
There’s a lot of extra stuff sandwiched in menus between all that: raising taxes, following a lengthy tech tree, designing custom ships, or figuring out how to juggle a planet’s population for maximum production. But one good thing about the new Master of Orion is that it never gets out of hand. If anything, it’s far more accessible and streamlined than the earlier games it’s based on. Part of Wargaming’s reason for reviving Orion was to introduce a new generation to 4X gaming, and there it succeeds admirably through the help of an optional adviser and a UI that conveniently draws attention to different elements as the turns pass.
In the process, it plays things a little too by-the-book. This reboot is so devoted to old, first-generation ideas that a sad sense of sameyness sets in as the map expands. Most newer games shake it up a little.
Ironically, most annoyances spring from the few additions to the template, such as the tendency for planets to need cleaning after getting too polluted, which gets tiresome with multiple worlds. Also, “star lanes” keep ships on straight paths between star systems, sometimes shattering the illusion of an open galaxy with traffic jams.
Mission to wars
The additions aren’t always bad. I’m particularly fond of the shift from turn-based to real-time combat in the battles that pop up when you fight alien civilizations or pirates. It’s a point of contention for the fans, but I’ve learned to admire the comparative speed of the approach and the way the right combination of timing and skill can let me use my smaller ships to outmaneuver the enemy’s larger ones.
Master of Orion’s greatest triumphs are those of personality. All those bucks spent hiring Hamill and friends went to good use, as it’s always fun to watch the animated leaders bicker and cheer in the diplomacy screen and the minions of your chosen race give you advice in the research screens. There’s even a little news show that sometimes pops up with two robotic newscasters recounting the big events happening between turns, which serves as a form of comic relief.
It’s a shame, then, that the civilizations’ differences usually stop at imagery and voicework. This may be a galaxy of 11 advanced races including warrior lizards, sexy cats and cruel robots, but venture deep down their technology trees and you’ll find they all amount to the same thing in practice. And while I wouldn’t call the AI a failure, it’s prone to puzzling actions such as twiddling its thumbs after diplomacy negotiations lead allies to declare war on your enemies.
A master of the 4X universe this is not. But neither is this release unenjoyable, as its lively presentation, personality, and occasional humor do much to shore up its weak points, and its comparative accessibility make it a decent option for anyone wading into the genre for the first time. But for depth? There are many worlds other than these.
Ironically, most annoyances spring from the few additions to the template